


mostly void

by myrrhs



Series: Les Rêveurs [1]
Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Carlos is Autistic, Gen, M/M, Switching of pronouns/misgendering-ish, Tentacles, Typical Night Vale Weirdness, bit of blood, ftm Carlos, transgender character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-03
Updated: 2015-04-03
Packaged: 2018-03-21 00:18:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3670401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myrrhs/pseuds/myrrhs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.<br/>There is another theory which states that this has already happened.”<br/>― Douglas Adams, <i>The Restaurant at the End of the Universe</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	mostly void

Let me tell you a story.

There was a small white house that sat on the corner of a lonely street in the western suburbs of New York. It was a ranch, wooden paneled, and it had a sloping roof with missing shingles. The front yard was perpetually covered in fallen leaves piled up from years of autumn, and a scarce amount of dead and dying trees were the tiny backyard’s only decoration. The people who lived in the house were just as distant as the house itself, barely even living there between job after job. Still, they seemed a happy couple in the little time they did have together, and they frequented small cafes on the weekends. They had a child, a tiny thing with a head of dark curls and a laugh like fairy bells. They took the best care of her that they could, but they weren’t the most wealthy people. All the same, the girl’s father often brought her home pink or purple or white dresses, lacy and cute things, so she’d look like the little princess her mother was so proud of.

The girl, Carla, grew up with nanny after nanny, them all leaving after trying to straighten her out to no avail. She quickly discarded dresses in favor of shorts and tees, and she played with bugs and rescued injured birds rather than playing house with friends. Then again, she never really had friends. When school came, Carla stayed away from the others, hovering somewhere between there and not. She didn’t talk, and sometimes the other students and even the teachers forgot she was even in the room. The only time they paid much attention to her was on a craft day when the students were cutting ribbons for Christmas decorations and she hid a pair of scissors under her skirt before dashing off to the bathroom. She just wanted to experiment, that was all she wanted. She wanted to collect a specimen, so she stood in front of the mirror and snipped off a lock of her hair. Carla grabbed it, inspected it closely, and then discarded it on the bathroom floor. Too short. She tried again. Too ragged. Again. And again. And again, until her hair was short and messy, a choppy, hacked mop. There weren’t any good specimens, still. So she sat on the bathroom floor crying until the teacher found her and yelled at her for wandering away for too long.

When Carla was nine, she walked among the galaxies as she slept, watching from a distance as strange, lumbering beasts dragged their heavy bodies in foreign lands. She dreamed of tentacles reaching from the void and glowing stormclouds raining down dead things, of maelstroms formed in sand rather than water. Most of all, she dreamed of a purple sky, a windmill, and the faint smell of vanilla coffee. As Carla grew older, her dreams grew more complex, more strange and terrifying, and yet, oddly, more realistic.

As soon as she turned fourteen, she dreamed of a petite boy with freckles and skinned knees, and another with stormy eyes and a voice like silk. She dreamed of a boy that looked like her, who was her, that sat alongside them at a campfire. She dreamed that they called her Carlos.

Carla had dreams in which she and the second boy held hands and gazed at the stars, but the stars were not the ones she knew. They seemed to be watching from a distance, looking over her. She would sometimes wake up in the middle of these dreams to see the stars on her ceiling, and then she’d make herself a cup of coffee (even though she hated coffee, tea had always been her thing), and she wouldn’t feel so alone.

When Carlos was sixteen, he shed his old name and took up the one he had dreamt up. He cut his hair and ripped the stars from his ceiling, and he lit a fire and tossed the dresses from his childhood into it. He sat for a long while staring at the burning fabric until the smell went away and sunset turned into dusk, and then night. The fire seemed to be laughing at him in a way, mocking him now that it had had its fill. As Carlos sat back, he watched the stars that seemed so cold and uncaring, far different from the ones he used to dream about. And suddenly he was crying and shaking all over, not about the stars or the dreams, but about his parents, his gender, his everything.

Carlos was now seventeen, and he began to have dreams of the boys again. They were older now, about as old as he was, and they were constantly together. When the three of them met in Carlos’ sleep, the two were always holding hands, and sometimes they kissed. Carlos felt a pang of jealousy when they did that. Their names were Earl and Cecil. Old-fashioned, Carlos had always thought. Earl was still quite scrawny, but his face had matured a bit. Cecil was taller and rather gaunt, and his eyes seemed to see beyond what was there. He always had pen or ink drawings covering his arms, of runes and indecipherable symbols. Carlos was always tempted to ask if he could study Cecil some time, but he managed to hold his tongue.

Occasionally, Carlos would have dreams similar to the ones of his childhood, but they were twisted and dark, malevolent rather than whimsical. The tentacles would ooze and drip foul substances, and the sandstorms would glow with a hellish light until the fine crystals melted, encasing him in a glass prison.

But that was alright with him, provided he got to meet with his two true friends. They’d often ask him about his life, and they were both very interested in science. They encouraged him to pursue a scholarship for a college he wanted to apply to, but couldn’t afford. He did, and he was accepted. Carlos was on his way to become a scientist, and in the hectic ways of a maturing young adult, dismissed his dreams as mere fantasies, ways of coping with stress, and eventually forgot all about them.

**Author's Note:**

> please, please leave critiques/comments ! i very much appreciate them


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